When Connor and Abby return from the past, things have changed. Old enemied have returned, new friends have appeared, and the ARC is facing budget cuts. Meanwhile, anomalies continue to open like there's no tomorrow and if it continues there soon will be.

(A
MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR) Hello. Welcome to Unnatural History,
and I hope you'll enjoy what lies ahead. This story was originally
about a virus that came through an anomaly, but then I thought of
something better. I have slight crossover elements in this story, but
not enough to warrant full crossover status. Thanks to SassyJ for
beta-reading. (END NOTE)

The
anomaly hung in the air, like a glowing ball of floating shards of
glass. It was surrounded by guards, all dressed in black SAS
uniforms, guns pointed directly at the anomaly, should anything come
through. A short technician stood at the laptop set on the pile of
crates, absently pushing glasses up the bridge of his nose. Next to
him stood a young man dressed in black trousers, black shirt and a
black leather jacket. He peered over the technician's shoulder,
occasionally glancing at the anomaly.

A sharp,
high-pitched keening sliced the air, echoing from its source – the
other side of the anomaly. The soldiers lifted their guns on reflex,
and the young man by the laptop ran towards a car parked by the doors
of the warehouse, returning a moment later with a rocket launcher.

The
anomaly quivered, and seconds later a group of people fell through
it, slamming into the ground.

"Lock
it!" one of them yelled, desperate.

The
technician rolled his eyes, and stabbed a button on the keyboard,
activating the disruptors positioned around the anomaly. They whirred
as they powered up, ready to release a blast of electricity into the
anomaly's event horizon, inverting its electromagnetic field and
locking it shut. Then a gigantic insect burst through it, seconds
before the anomaly condensed into a glowing ball, hovering innocently
in the air.

The
soldiers opened fire at the insect, hoping to breach its tough
exoskeleton. The creature slowed to a hover, scanning the mass of
meat below it… and exploded.

Captain
Becker looked up from where he had been lying underneath the anomaly,
and saw a young man he didn't recognise lowering a rocket launcher.
The kid had messy, sandy brown hair and piercing blue eyes set into
an angular face, which rung absolutely no bells in Becker's memory.

A group of
medics rushed forward, part of a medical team that the ARC kept on
standby, two bearing a stretcher. Dr Morgan stooped in front of
Becker, reaching her hand down to help him up.

"I can
see," Morgan said, then motioned for the stretcher bearers to take
Connor to the waiting ambulance. Abby and Sarah picked themselves up,
Abby limping after Connor. Morgan turned to Sarah and Becker, "We'll
have a look at you at the ambulance," she said, leading them
towards a black van that was the ARC's standby ambulance.

Becker
heard a welsh-accented voice shouting orders, and glanced over his
shoulder to see the technician, a short man with a white lab coat,
short hair, fingerless gloves yelling at the soldiers, and the young
man he didn't recognise collecting bits of insect and dumping them
in a dustbin.

"Er…
Doctor," he asked, glancing back to Morgan, "Who are those
people, the technician and the kid?"

Morgan
gave him an odd look, "You should know them by now, Captain."

"What?"
Sarah said, turning to look.

"I don't
remember them," Becker said.

"You
must," Morgan said, stopping and turning to them, "Dr Taylor was
a student with Professor Cutter, and Griffin helped us with that
anomaly in Cardiff."

"There
was an anomaly in Cardiff?" Sarah frowned.

"Yes…"
Morgan frowned too, "Did either of you take a knock to the head?"

Lester
stood by the window in his office, looking over the main operations
room through the window. The technicians were busy calibrating more
Locking Devices, and experimenting with more compact units for easier
transportation.

That had
been one of the main priorities since Lord Bathelwaite had been
assigned by the Prime Minister to liaise with the ARC on his behalf.
Bathelwaite, a former military general, had made it very clear that
the ARC should prioritise containing the anomalies as soon as
possible, destroying anything that came through 'for the good of
the people'. He had been against Griffin's appointment to the
primary response team, and was putting pressure on Lester to
mass-produce locking devices.

Lester
resented Bathelwaite and his interference, preferring to be more
cautious. They'd already seen what rushing in blind could do –
all Cutter's talk of Claudia Brown. Dr Taylor had theorised that
something had changed the timeline whilst Cutter had been in the
Permian, causing this Claudia Brown person to vanish. Taylor had
reiterated the theory when Becker, Sarah, Connor and Abby had claimed
not to recognise him or Griffin, and had talked about rescuing
somebody called Danny Quinn.

Lester's
computer pinged, signifying an email. He checked it, and sighed. He
picked up his telephone, and dialled the home office.

Connor lay
on a bed in the ARC's infirmary, a bandage wrapped round the
swelling on his leg. According to Dr Morgan, it was just a sprain and
he'd be fine soon. Abby and Sarah were sitting next to him, and
Becker was standing behind them. On the other side of the bed were Dr
Taylor and Griffin O'Conner.

Taylor was
explaining his theory of an alternate timeline, which seemed to make
sense. And from the looks on Connor and Abby's faces, they had
encountered something similar before.

Becker had
assessed the Welshman and the kid as soon as they had entered the
room, and he wasn't sure of what he'd seen. Dr Taylor was a short
man, his glasses forever sliding down the bridge of his nose, who
permanently wore fingerless gloves. His pockets were filled with
junk, ranging from tape measures and hypodermic syringes to a packet
of jelly babies, which he'd offered round before the debriefing.
Taylor was obviously highly intelligent, if a little scatterbrained
and eccentric.

"So,
Connor, Abby and this Danny Quinn went through the anomaly to find
Helen Cutter," Taylor said, "And you ran into a future version of
the ARC…"

"Yeah,"
Connor said, "It was all empty and destroyed."

"And it
had some sort of device for controlling the anomalies?"

"It was
like it was finding certain anomalies from a database," Abby said.

"It had
a map like the one in the artefact," Sarah added, "Showing where
to find an anomaly."

"But if
it tracked anomalies," Griffin interrupted, speaking for the first
time, "Why did she need to open them?"

Becker
examined the kid. Griffin was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, and he
was dressed in baggy clothes – black trainers, black trousers,
black leather jacket over black shirt. His eyes, light blue, which
seemed to watch everyone carefully, were set into an angular face
that could have passes for Danny Quinn twenty years ago.

The kid
held Becker's gaze, blinking freely, until Becker looked back to
Taylor.

"Good
point," Connor frowned, "Cutter did think about temporal
faultlines a couple of years back, with the Mosasaurs."

"That's
it!" Taylor seemed to jump with excitement, "The device Helen was
using must act as a tracker that can find specific temporal
faultlines, stored in a database."

"The
artefact," Connor said.

"Yes,"
Taylor agreed, "Once you've found a faultline, it can open an
anomaly on the faultline…" Taylor paused, thinking hard.

"You
thought the Artefact was a map of all the anomalies there's ever
been," Griffin said, leaning forward in his chair.

"And if
that theory's right, then all the anomalies exist on temporal
faultlines," Connor realised, "So any of them could be opened
with that device?"

Taylor
sighed, "No rest for the wicked," he smiled and left, dropping a
packet of jelly babies onto the table next to Connor. Griffin checked
his watch, then stood and followed Taylor out. As Connor opened the
jelly babies, Becker excused himself, and left the infirmary.

Idly, he
wandered through the corridors of the ARC, checking the security,
seeing what else had changed. Professor Cutter's office door was
now labelled 'Dr Malcolm Taylor', and had a reconstruction of
Cutter's monstrosity of a matrix at its centre. Becker had never
been able to understand it, but evidently Taylor could, and had
reconstructed it from Cutter's notes.

The main
operations room was much the same as it had been before the
time-shift, as Taylor referred to whatever the event that had changed
history was, except for several technicians working on building more
anomaly locking devices. The Anomaly detector stood, tall and proud,
against the ramp that led to the administrative level, where he could
see Taylor talking to a frustrated-looking Lester. Becker wondered
what they were talking about.

He
wondered out of the operations room, past the labs where Abby was
dissecting the remains of the insects from the future. He left her to
herself, and paused at a doorway leading down to the basement levels.
He didn't normally go down there, since there was normally nothing
but deep-frozen creatures, generators and databanks. But now there
was a sign on the door reading 'gymnasium'.

He
followed the steps down, into a large open space, with a few mats and
running machines, and a large padded pillar. Griffin was standing in
front of the pillar, barefoot and bare-chested, standing in a classic
karate stance – legs shoulder width apart, front leg bent, back leg
straight, arms raised to guard against attacks on his torso or face –
and alternately hitting it with his fists or kicking it.

Becker
watched the kid for a few minutes, noting his lean muscular frame.
Griffin paused after five more minutes, panting slightly and wiping
sweat from his brow. He turned and leant against the wall, swigging
water from a bottle. He looked up at Becker, raising his eyebrows.

"How
long have you been standing there?" he asked.

"About
five minutes," Becker answered, walking over to him, "You a boxer
or something?" he asked.

"Mixed
martial arts," Griffin corrected, "I liked learning to beat the
crap out of people, and after I lost my job I–"

The
familiar alarm blared into life, signifying the appearance of another
anomaly.

"Y'know,"
Griffin said as he grabbed his shoes and shirt from the floor by the
pillar, "I'd swear they were happening more often."

Danny
Quinn fell to his knees, string at the empty air where the anomaly
had closed. It was gone. His only route home.

"Fuck,"
he said, over and over again. Then he screamed it aloud, angrily
punching a rock, then nursing his bleeding knuckles.

He was
trapped here. Forever. Nowhere to go.

The
language helped him vent his anger at life, God, the universe,
whoever, for stranding him here. Alone. Apart from what was left of
Helen.

That was
it! Helen would have one of those opening devices!

Danny
leapt to his feet, and ran as fast as he could towards Helen's
corpse.

(AUTHOR'S
NOTE) So there's the first chapter. Hope you liked it. Just so
you know, the characters of Griffin O'Conner and Dr Taylor are the
crossover elements – Griffin is from the movie Jumper, and Taylor
from Dr Who. I justify my use of them with the fact the timeline has
changed, and this quote from Douglas Adams: 'In an infinite
universe, anything, even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
is possible.' Ciao for now. (END NOTE)

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